The drive from Thunder Bay in Ontario to Winnipeg in Manitoba was too far for us to do in one day – 9-½ hours. Five or six hours at a time is as much as we can tolerate. So we broke up the drive with a one-night stay at Sandbar Lake Provincial Park. We arrived in a rain shower and it rained off and on until we left the next morning. Charlie did get a 6 am swim at the boat ramp before we departed.
The scenery continued to be lake after lake after lake among rolling hills. I’m sure a lot of beavers were taken out of this country by the voyageurs back in the day. Manitoba is due north of Minnesota, which is known as the land of a thousand lakes. Looking at the map of northern Manitoba, there seems to be equal part lakes and land.
We arrived in the early afternoon. After docking, we took Charlie to a dog park along the Red River. Unfortunately, the river had steep, muddy banks and the water was latte brown. We decided to skip the swim. But Charlie enjoyed a mile-long walk through the woods. The soft surface was easy on her paws and shoulders. We were happy to see that she tired herself out without swimming.
We had heard about a street fair being held at The Forks, a park downtown that is situated on a point at the confluence of the Red River and the Assiniboine River. We had a stroll through the event as well as the nearby Forks Market. The music and food choices were not appealing, so we headed to a nearby barbecue restaurant that has music from noon until closing everyday.
Belle’s Kitchen and Music Hall serves up Southern-inspired barbecue dishes, beer on tap and craft cocktails in a rustic dining room with a small stage. We saw an understated duo that played a couple of sets of rock and country classics. The female vocalist had a nice voice and played an excellent rhythm acoustic guitar. Her partner carried the melody and solos on acoustic and electric guitar, in addition to providing vocal harmony. It was fun!
We returned to camp and enjoyed a real wood fire for the first time in four days because of burn bans in upper Ontario. The next day, we tried a different dog park which had great trails through a hilly meadow. Unfortunately, the ponds in the park were posted “no swimming” due to unspecified health risks. Charlie still got a good workout, walking more than a half-mile and retrieving Angie’s short-distance throws in the grass. She also got to socialize with several dogs.
We dropped Charlie off back at the trailer and headed downtown again. We had pizza, salad and cocktails on a roof deck before returning to the Forks Market for coffee and beers in Adirondack chairs above the river. Then we climbed a five-story observation tower for a view of downtown. Subsequently we drove across the Red River to the French Quarter to capture the iconic city skyline photo with the Riel Pedestrian Bridge in the foreground and the beautiful architecture of the Human Rights Museum in the background. We also stopped at the St Boniface Basilica and cemetery which had some interesting historic markers.
The pedestrian bridge is named after Louis Riel (1844-1885), a Canadian politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and a political leader of the Métis people. He led political and armed resistance movements against the Canadian government in his attempts to advocate Métis rights. In 2004, the CBC’s Greatest Canadian project ranked Riel as the 11th “Greatest Canadian” on the basis of a public vote.
The Métis people in Canada are specific cultural communities who trace their descent to First Nations and European settlers, primarily the French, in the early decades of the colonization of Canada. Métis peoples are recognized as one of Canada’s Indigenous peoples under the Constitution Act of 1982, along with First Nations and Inuit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9tis#M%C3%A9tis_people_in_Canada
Many Canadians have mixed Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal ancestry, but that does not make them Métis or even Aboriginal … What distinguishes Métis people from everyone else is that they associate themselves with a culture that is distinctly Métis.
Traditional markers of Métis culture include use of Aboriginal-European languages, such as Michif (French-Cree-Dene) and Bungi (Cree-Ojibwa-English); distinctive clothing, such as the arrowed sash (ceinture flêchée); a rich repertoire of fiddle music, jigs and square dances, and practising a traditional economy based on hunting, trapping, and gathering.
